Her posture relaxes even further, fists unclenched. “Well, that’s sweet of him. He’s quite the cook, isn’t he?”
“He is.” As far as my mom’s concerned, Jonah can do no wrong. He’s so normal, so stable—living proof that I’m doing fine. She saw him at the farmers’ market one day with the littles and wouldn’t shut up about how sweet and responsible he seems, how wonderful it is that I’m spending time with such a nice boy. She’s right, of course, but he’s not so nice that he won’t come over when she’s not home and make me dinner and spend the rest of the evening in my bedroom. I cover my mouth, as if I am thinking very hard. But I’m just hiding my smile.
“All right,” she says, picking up her keys. “This conversation is not over, but we’re tabling it for now. The Vespa’s going back. I’m not happy, Viv.”
Jonah shows up an hour later with a brown paper grocery bag. For some reason, this draws me to him even more, imagining he’s my older, live-in boyfriend bringing home groceries to our big, modern beach house.
“This is good timing,” he says. “I’ve been working on a few new recipes for the restaurant. You can try one tonight instead of waiting until your birthday party.”
“I’m getting a birthday party?” I clap with delight, and I’m already imagining silly hats and fairy lights.
Jonah rolls his eyes. “You said what you wanted for your birthday was for me to fix up the patio, so that’s what I’m doing.”
I watch him unpack the groceries and lay them on the table, and there are plenty of things I don’t recognize—something green and leafy that is not exactly normal lettuce, a vegetable that looks like a cross between a potato and a radish. We find pots and pans and spatulas together, roving through Richard’s kitchen because my mom and I almost never use it, so I don’t know where anything is. Jonah puts salmon in the oven, and he places the potato-radishes—which he called red potatoes—into a saucepan of boiling water.
My mom said she’d be home late. But, even after our fight, I won’t be surprised if she has a few glasses of champagne and goes home with another tortured artist. I’ll get a regret-filled text message by midnight, but it won’t be so regretful that she actually changes her mind. I’m not judging her—I don’t want it to sound like I am—because I understand; I do. My mom wants someone to love her, and I recognize that having a daughter who loves you is not enough and that she craves to be adored by a steady, interesting, kindhearted man. I’m not saying I think going home with randoms is the best way to figure it out, but it might be fun and it’s certainly better than staying home and meeting no one.
I didn’t figure that out on my own, about my mom. My aunt has always been chatty and judgmental about my mom after a glass or two of wine. Because she’s not happy in her marriage and jealous that my mom isn’t tied down to anyone. That part, I figured out on my own.
I sit on the counter, swinging my legs as I watch Jonah work. It’s all so lovely, the easy rhythm as he slices peaches for a salad, the deftness of his hands in every movement between stove and island and sink. “This is really beautiful to watch, Jonah—I mean it. It’s like watching you speak a different language, you know? It’s like when you walk past two people speaking Spanish, and you don’t understand the meaning of each word, but the sound of it is beautiful, and you can tell they understand each other. That’s how you are with food.”
He smiles, stirring at some kind of sauce. “It’s not that complicated.”
Well, only because he grew up speaking food.
“Hey, Jonah? What’s a reduction? Like, it’s on menus sometimes—a balsamic reduction or something.”
“Oh. It’s a technique for making a sauce. You heat ingredients in a pan until enough evaporates, reducing it. The remaining sauce is more flavorful. Sometimes thicker.”
“Hmm. Good to know.” From my seat on the counter, I’m eye level with him, which is new, so I grab him by the front of his shirt and tug him toward me. It’s the kind of kissing we sink into so fast, my hands drawn immediately to that gorgeous hair, tugging him in farther. I feel that moment where rational thought swishes out of me, and it’s like a lever that propels a train out of the station; I’m gone, there’s no stopping me, we’re riding this rail all the way to the end.
But he pulls his mouth away from mine, and I think he’s going to say something sexy to me, but instead he says, “The salmon’s going to burn.”
It takes a moment for me to get my bearings because my mind is so fogged over, levitating above us. You’d think this would hurt my feelings, that my kissing talent isn’t enough to distract him, like I can’t transport him far enough away from the reality of cooking. But I don’t want someone who makes it easy; I don’t want someone who follows every slapdash plan that I create in my mind. Jonah Daniels can be such an enigma. There are smudges of my red lipstick across his mouth, making him more delicious than any of the food in this kitchen.
I watch him carefully as he lifts the salmon from the oven. “Jonah?”